An 84-year-old former Soviet state security officer has been found guilty of genocide and sentenced by a Lithuanian court to five years in jail over his participation in a 1956 operation to arrest guerrilla leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas.

Court prosecutors in the city of Kaunas asked for a longer
sentence – seven years – for Stanislovas Drelingas, who insisted
he was innocent.

"Although the defendant denied his direct complicity in
genocide, i.e., he denied having taken any part in the operation
specified in the indictment, evidence in the case suggests that
he was part of the operation and helped other members of the
Soviet administration," the court said.

The court ruled on the shorter term due to long-lasting legal
proceedings, Drelingas’ health problems, and the fact that his
role in the crime was secondary. His verdict has not yet come
into force and could be moved to a new trial in a Lithuanian
appeals court.

Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas – one of the leaders of an
anti-Soviet guerrilla troop called “Forest Brothers” – was
arrested in 1956 in Kaunas, sentenced to death, and shot after
spending a year in a Vilnius jail.

Members of the "Forest Brothers" – which totaled around 50,000
Lithuanians – took part in the anti-Soviet resistance movement in
post-war Lithuania.

Last year, Lithuania's Constitutional Court ruled that
deportations and repressions carried out by the Soviets during
the guerrilla war could be classified as genocide, as the actions
were aimed at annihilating a significant part of the Lithuanian
nation.

This is not the first time that a Soviet war veteran has been
charged with genocide in recent years. In 2008, after years of
investigation, Arnold Meri – a WWII veteran at the first Estonian
Hero of the Soviet Union – was charged with the same crime for
taking part in the deportation of 251 Estonian civilians from the
island of Hiiumaa to Siberia’s Novosibirsk region.

The prosecution said that 43 of them later died. Meri insisted he
was not guilty, as he was only appointed to monitor how the
process was conducted and to ensure that punishment was limited.
Thus, he couldn’t control local authorities’ abuse. The case was
automatically closed on March 27, 2009 after his death at the age
of 89.

Meanwhile, Jewish communities in Baltic countries have expressed
worry that anti-Semitism ideology in the region appears to be on
the rise once again.

This week, as Lithuania was celebrating 25 years of independence,
far-right groups organized a parade in Vilnius. It came just a
few weeks after about 500 Lithuanians, some carrying Nazi
swastikas, attended a similar march in the country’s second
largest city of Kaunas.

The city was the site of the Baltics' worst WWII-era Jewish
massacre, when almost 10,000 people were killed in one day.

Yet another Nazi march is planned for next Monday in Latvia’s
capital of Riga. The Latvian Legion veterans’ annual parade
commemorates the date when Nazi Germany first deployed the
regiment against the Soviet army in 1943. Meanwhile, a separate
parade by the Latvian Waffen SS Legion has been criticized by
anti-fascist movements.